Mainland Southeast Asia

THAILAND

Within mainland Southeast Asia, the film industry with the most extensive
history, as well as with the most activity at present, is that of
Thailand. Film screenings put on by traveling foreign exhibitors have been
present in Thailand since 1897. A Japanese businessman opened a permanent
cinema in Bangkok in 1905, and others followed soon afterwards. Although
broadly popular, film was not necessarily seen as a lower-class form of
entertainment: not only did its foreign origins endow it with a certain
cachet, but members of the royal family also took an interest in it from
the time of its arrival. Indeed, it was a member of the royal family,
Prince Sanphasat Suphakit, who is credited with being the first Thai
filmmaker, shooting footage of royal ceremonies from early as 1900. While
a number of filmmakers, both Thai and foreign, shot documentary footage in
the silent era, records show only a modest number of fiction films made in
Thailand at that time, including the American-produced
Suvarna of Siam
(1923).
Survana
was followed in 1927 by the Thai-produced fiction feature
Chok Sorng San
(
Double Luck
), followed by sixteen other silent features, none of them extant. In 1932
a Thai-produced sound film,
Long Thang
(
Going Astray
), was produced, and in the subsequent decade both films with recorded
soundtracks and features with soundtracks performed live, Thai-produced
and foreign-made, could be found in Bangkok cinemas.

Perhaps the most remarkable development of the post–World War II
era was a turn to shooting feature films in economical 16mm, rather than
35mm, without recorded soundtracks. Just as in earlier decades, these
films were presented with live performers offering dialogue and sound
effects, and this remained the dominant mode of production through the
1960s. Film viewing took place in traditional film theaters as well as in
temporary, open-air cinemas run by traveling exhibitors. Such screenings
were commonplace through the 1970s and indeed can still occasionally be
found. The most popular movie star in this era was undoubtedly the
ever-suave Mitr Chaibancha, who appeared in hundreds of movies between
1956 and 1970 before he died while filming a helicopter stunt. A key
director to emerge in this era was Rattana Pestonji, who tried to promote
the use of 35mm through his own independent studio. Rattana produced the
first Thai film to achieve international festival recognition (
Santi Weena
, 1954), then went on to direct and photograph a handful of stylish films
considered key achievements in Thai cinema, including the comedy drama
Rong Raem Narok
(
Country Hotel
, 1957) and the crime film
Prae Dum
(
Black Silk
, 1961).

Prince Chatrichalerm Yukol on the set of
Suriyothai (The Legend of Suriyothai,
2001).

The 1970s were a time of substantial political and social unrest in
Thailand: national power changed hands, sometimes violently, on a number
of occasions, and the decade ended with a military-backed administration
in power and many left-leaning activists forced into hiding. It is in part
out of the turmoil of the decade and the resulting raised social
consciousness that a significant new tendency toward making social-issue
films arose in the Thai industry. One senior figure (who had worked in the
industry since the 1950s) exemplifying this trend was director Vichit
Kounavudhi (b. 1922), who distinguished himself with films examining the
difficulties faced by women in Thai society (for example, in the melodrama
Mia Luang
[
First Wife
, 1978]) and the hardships of northern ethnic groups (
Luuk Isaan
[
Son of the Northeast
, 1982]). Among the newly emerging directors focusing on social woes at
this time were Prince Chatrichalerm Yukol (b. 1942), Euthana Mukdasanit (
Thepthida Bar 21
[
The Angel of Bar 21
, 1978] and
Peesua Lae Dokmai
[
Butterfly and Flowers
, 1986]), and Manop Udomdej (
Prachachon Nok
[
On the Fringe of Society
, 1981] and
Ya Pror Me Chu
[
The Accusation
, 1985]). Though not equally focused on contemporary political issues,
Cherd Songsri also distinguished himself at this time as a director
concentrating on rural and historical dramas, especially with his highly
successful film
Plae Kao
(
The Scar
, 1977).

The start of the 1990s was not, on the whole, a good time for Thai cinema
(save perhaps for teen films), in part because of competition from both
the video market and Hollywood films, which soon achieved even greater
domination on the screens of the multiplexes that started to be built in
mid-decade. From 1997, however, feature films from a group of new, younger
directors, largely with backgrounds in the Thai advertising industry,
began to achieve recognition at international festivals and attention from
foreign critics. The first new director to appear on the scene was Nonzee
Nimibutr, with his highly successful 1950s crime drama,
2499: Anthapan Krong Muang
(
Dang Bireley and the Young Gangsters
, 1997). He followed this with the box-office record-breaking period
horror film
Nang Nak
(1999), which also proved a favorite with festival audiences and achieved
some measure of international (especially pan-Asian) distribution. Penek
Ratanaruang (b. 1962) made the first in a series of quirky, highly
stylized dramas of contemporary Thai life in 1997,
Fun Bar Karaoke
, following it up with the dark comedy
6ixtynin9
(1999). Both directors have continued to make films on a regular basis,
and both have also been able to garner international co-financing for
their films.

PRINCE CHATRICHALERM YUKOL
b. Bangkok, Thailand, 29 November 1942

Prince Chatrichalerm Yukol's work exemplifies a number of trends
in modern Thai cinema, such as the interest in social issues in the
1970s, teen-oriented drama in the mid-1990s, and historical drama in the
early twenty-first century. At the same time, however, Chatrichalerm is
an exception in the attention he has received abroad, his sustained and
regular production of films, his films' characteristic use of
stylistic flourish, and his willingness to embrace controversial subject
matter and imagery (this last made possible in part because of the
prince's exceptional social status as the nephew of a former
king).

Chatrichalerm's exposure to film began early: his father was a
sometime filmmaker, and the prince studied at the University of
California–Los Angeles (UCLA), at which time he also worked as an
assistant to Merian C. Cooper, the producer of such film classics as
King Kong
(1933) and
The Searchers
(1956). His knowledge of world film history is clear from his films
themselves: his first feature, and Thailand's first
science-fiction film,
Mun Ma Kab Kwam Mued
(
It Comes with the Darkness
, 1971), is clearly informed by the plots of classic 1950s US
science-fiction films, while his
Thongpoon Khokepho
(
Citizen
, 1977), a feature about a taxi driver in search of his stolen vehicle,
is a kind of Thai take on
Ladri di biciclette
(
The Bicycle Thieves
, 1948).
Issaraparb Kong Thongpoon Khokepho
(
Citizen II
, 1984) thematically recalls the films of John Ford, a favorite director
of the prince.

These international inspirations, however, have been put in the service
of distinctively Thai concerns—the second of
Chatrichalerm's
Citizen
films, for example, concerns the difficulties of underclass existence
in rapidly developing Bangkok, particularly for rural migrants. Before
2001, Prince Chatrichalerm was best known for his social-issue films,
dating back to his
Khao Cheu Chan
(
Doctor Kan
, 1973), with its then daring theme of an idealistic young physician
facing official corruption; his prostitution drama,
Thepthida Rong Raem
(
Angel
, 1974), with its memorable montage of an upcountry girl's sex
work intercut with construction of the rural family home for which her
work is paying; and the more recent, harrowingly graphic drama of teen
drug abuse,
Sia Dai
(
Daughter
, 1995).

Suriyothai
(2001) was unprecedented in both the prince's work and Thai
cinema for the massiveness of its budget and scale. Based upon years of
research and supported and bankrolled by the royal family, the film goes
to great pains to authentically represent the times of the
sixteenth-century queen of its title. The film was wildly successful in
Thailand, but its international-release version, produced under the
supervision of Prince Chatrichalerm's UCLA classmate, Francis
Ford Coppola, did not fare as well. The prince subsequently began work
on another big-budget historical epic,
King Naresuan
, scheduled for completion in 2006.

As Nonzee and Penek experienced success, producers gradually started
investing in more local productions from more new directors. Yongyooth
Thongkonthoon's comedy about a (real-life) transvestite volleyball
team,
Satree Lek
(
Iron Ladies
, 2000), managed the up to then rare feat of garnering a theatrical
release (albeit limited) in the United States. The co-writer and
cinematographer of that film, Jira Maligool, then had a terrific local
success as director of a comedy of rural life,
15 Kham Duen 11
(
Mekhong Full Moon Party
, 2002), and went on to produce the even more successful comic-nostalgic
childhood romance,
Fan Chan
(
My Girl
, 2003). Aside from comedy, other popular genres have included crime
films, horror films, and historical dramas; most significant among the
historical dramas has been Prince Chatrichalerm's
Suriyothai
(
The Legend of Suriyothai
, 2001) and Thanit Jitnakul's epic of eighteenth-century
Thai-Burmese battles,
Bang Rajan
(2000). Since 2002, Thai producers have also started to release
substantial numbers of new direct-to-video features on video compact disc
(VCD) and DVD, primarily for the domestic market.

One recent film that seems to hold the potential to raise international
awareness of Thai cinema is the martial-arts film
Ong-Bak
(Prachiya Pinkaew, 2003), which made substantial money in Asia and Europe
and received a modest release in the United States. Some of the
international festival and art-house favorites, however, have
paradoxically garnered little interest in their home country. Wisit
Sasanatieng's nostalgic, spaghetti-western inspired
Fah Talai Jone
(
Tears of the Black Tiger
, 2000), for example, while generating much interest at Cannes and getting
released in DVDs in several markets, was a financial flop domestically.
And the stylistically unconventional (and often sexually frank) feature
films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul (b. 1970) (
Sud Sanaeha
[
Blissfully Yours
, 2002];
Sud Pralad
[
Tropical Malady
, 2004]) received only limited play in Thailand until the director won
repeated awards at Cannes.

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